Water Main Break Snarls Subways in Manhattan

A woman jumps over water being pumped out of a hole in the street, caused by a water main break on Wednesday.

By Alison Fox, Ted Mann and Pervaiz Shallwani

UPDATED | New Yorkers were greeted with rerouted trains, packed subways, slow buses and closed streets thanks to a water main break during rush hour near Union Square.

Steve Remich for the Wall Street Journal

Trains were packed and frustrations were high at the 72nd Street station on the Upper West Side Wednesday after a water main break interrupted subway service.

The nightmare morning commute actually began around midnight, when the Fire Department of New York received a call about the break near Fifth Avenue and East 13th Street, officials said.

The water main, which is 36 inches in diameter, is made of cast iron and was installed in 1877, a spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Protection said. Repairs will take several days.

By the time morning came, street closures were in effect along parts of Fifth Avenue and East 13th and 14th streets. Buses in the area were running slow thanks to traffic. And there were scores of subway reroutes as the MTA pumped water out of the system:

—Southbound B trains were suspended from Bedford Park, and Northbound trains ran local in Brooklyn then were rerouted over the Q.

—Southbound M service was rerouted over the F from 36th Street in Queens to 34th Street in Manhattan.

Getty

A woman pushes her Citi Bike down a street muddied by the water main break.

—Southbound D trains ran local in the Bronx and terminated at 34th Street in Manhattan. Northbound trains ran over the Q line btween Brooklyn and Manhattan.

—C trains ran express between Columbia Circle and Canal Street.

—The F was rerouted over the E from West 4th Street to Roosevelt Avenue.

Ashley Lightbourn, 31 years old, said she was 45 minute late for work at the city’s Human Resources Administration. Her 2 train from Harlem was running fine, but her 14th Street bus from Seventh Avenue to Fifth Avenue but was moving at a snail’s pace.

“It was hard to get across town. We weren’t able

Associated Press

Water is pumped out of a hole in the middle of Fifth Avenue caused by a broken water main early Wednesday.

to go straight down 14th street,” she said. “It was frustrating just tying to get around and trying to get to work.”

Commuters weren’t the only ones hit hard. People who live near the water main break suffered from floods.

Bill Bissell, the superintendent of the Butterfield House, a co-op on 12th Street between fifth and sixth avenues said he is using eight pumps to get 12 feet of water out of the building’s garage and basement.

He said he has never seen anything “of this magnitude.”

“There’s no heat, no hot water, the electricity can go at any minute,” he said. “It’s like Sandy without the Sandy.”

Mr. Bissell he woke up to the sound of rushing water.

“13th Street [was] running like the Hudson River,” he said. “Cleanup is going to be very difficult.”

There are currently five commercial billings on Fifth Avenue between 12th and 14th streets without water. Officials also shut down water along a stretch of 10th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, leaving 75 residential customers without water.

Even alternate modes of transportation were foiled.

Ed Casabian, 32, said he had an eye doctor appointment near Union Square this morning. He took a Citi Bike to his appointment from Alphabet City, thinking he would avoid public transit—but he was late anyway because he had trouble finding a rack to park his ride.

“It’s crazy, totally crazy,” he said. “It was a big surprise when I got here. It’s kind of amazing how much we take for granted in New York.”

It might be cold comfort to morning commuters, but the flooding and delays from the break could been worse, the MTA said.

Water from the break ran west over the streets shortly before 1 a.m. and poured into the subway at 13th Street and Sixth Avenue, an MTA spokesman said. The MTA quickly shut down power as water began to accumulate in the tracks—which carry B, D, F and M lines—before the water could reach the electrified third rail.

In all, the flood reached depths between 24 and 30 inches along a stretch of about 300 feet in the tunnels south of the breach. But portable pumps, as well as the MTA’s built-in pump room at 9th Street, were able to keep the water from reaching higher levels or causing more extensive damage to sensitive equipment, like the signal system’s electronic relays.

The MTA dispatched pump trains to the site of the flooding, a spokesman said, but ultimately didn’t use them because the water levels had been held in check. The water main break was “controlled” by 5:30 a.m., and service through the Sixth Avenue line tunnels was restored at 10:25 a.m., he said.

Still, tensions were high on the subways. Commuters jostled for space or endured longer-than-usual waits:

MTA officials said they hauled in the emergency pumps to clear water off subway tracks: